Dr. De Mars blog on having achieved success in business, sports and academics without ever actually having grown up. Also includes random thoughts on judo, parenting,mixed martial arts, winning & whatever I feel like rambling on about today.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Judo stunt workout

Friday it was pouring rain in Los Angeles. Not many kids came to practice and I can't blame them. Some of our kids ride their bikes or skateboard to get to practice and we got several inches of rain. They would have arrived cold and soaked to the skin. Other kids are dropped off by their parents or take the bus but, possibly because some trees had downed power lines, many stop lights were out causing major traffic jams. Practice was over at 5 PM and I didn't get home until 8 PM. Now, I did stop over at another school and meet with someone for half an hour, but still it was pretty crazy because I only live 17 miles from the school.

So, it seemed like a perfect day to do some new fun drills.

It may not be obvious what we are doing from this video.

Did you ever think about the fact that o soto makikomi is a perfect throw if you are fighting more than one person? I've noticed when working with people who do stunts in the movies that this is one of the throws they like because as you are going to grab the person's head you can throw punch and hit someone behind you or to the side. Thus, it's a great throw for one of those fight scenes in the movies when you are attacked by multiple villains.

As you can see, the person doing the throwing gets practice doing a good judo throw and the focus on punching someone to the side gets them to get that arm around the head which students often seem to not get far enough. The further around the head you can get, the tighter the throw is going to be.

At the same time, that the person is working on their throw, the one being "punched" is working on his or her falls. Now, falling probably isn't the most fun skill to work on as a general rule, this activity makes it fun. Also, I know that the ability to fall without hurting yourself is really useful to people doing stunt work.

So, there you have it, a fun drill for a rainy day, that teaches good form for throwing and falling.

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One world championships, a million dollars in contracts, four degrees, four children - and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Author: Winning on the Ground - available from Amazon & Black Belt and other book places.